Chinese Food Safety: Is Death Called For?

Most of us rant and rave with little expectation of having a dramatic affect on the world around us, but sometimes the world is accommodating. Only a few weeks ago I was calling on the Chinese government to enforce its own rules of food safety, and they went and sentenced the head of their food and drug administration from 1998 to 2005 to death for approving faulty medicines that killed six patients. Now that's some reaction.

I don't think it was my article that pushed them over the edge, but I haven't felt so connected to the political zeitgeist since my late father found his name on Nixon's enemy list, granting him the only recognition of accomplishment he ever received for antiwar efforts.

Of course, I'm not glad to be aligned with a group willing to kill someone to make a point (and apparently, this is not an isolated case of such proposed punishment) but it's nice to feel appreciated -- just not so much. A milder action is the three-day meeting that occurred May 22-24th in Washington as part of a cabinet-level meeting under the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue. There, representatives went over a shopping list of requests for things like raw data, confirmed testing procedures, registration of all food exporters, and clearances for our own FDA personnel to travel conveniently through China. Boring, but potentially more helpful.

Some of this is just on the request level now, but it strikes me as terrific progress. On the other hand, we've got a lot of work to do to get around the entrenched tradition of counterfeiting or working around lax law enforcement in order to make a quick profit. An article in The New York Times June 5 illustrates this point well, and another, June 7 NYT article notes a whole rash of changes and concerns that sound good. Both detailed, informative articles are by NYT correspondent David Barboza. This will be a story to follow closely in the year ahead.

So there may be progress. And how nice to see governments do my bidding, for a change. Maybe.